The original Famicom Wars had no plot at all. You would choose to control one of two rival armies, Red Star or Blue Moon, and fight off the other until completing all the maps. Super Famicom Wars is essentially a remake/sequel, featuring all the maps from the original, as well as brand new ones. It was also the first game to feature 4-player maps, with the Green Earth and Yellow Comet armies joining the battle, as well as selectable commanding officers (COs), each with their own specialty and weakness that affect the whole army.

The original Game Boy Wars follows the same premise as the original Famicom Wars, but uses hexagonal maps instead of square-based maps in a bit of a departure from the rest of the series. The Hudson Soft developed sequels, Game Boy Wars Turbo and Game Boy Wars 2, were essentially expansions to the original Game Boy Wars, featuring new maps and a sped-up decision-making process for the CPU. The third and last of the Hudson-produced sequels, Game Boy Wars 3, is a complete departure from the rest of the series, being modeled more after Hudson's own Nectaris series of war sims than the rest of the Wars series. The third game may also have supported a link cable for Japanese cell phones for online play purposes.

The Advance Wars games for, obviously, the Game Boy Advance, were the first games to be released internationally, as well as the first to have an actual plot. It and the two after it make up a trilogy involving the Black Hole army. Oddly enough, the first Advance Wars was for a couple of years not released in Japan, only showing up in a compilation pack with its sequel. The Advance Wars name has stuck in America even as the series moved to the DS, while Japan reverted to the name Famicom Wars for the DS and Wii installments. The Advance Wars series expanded upon the CO system from Super Famicom Wars, giving each CO their own ability which they can summon during the brink of a battle in order to change the odds in their favor.

Advance Wars: Days of Ruin is a completely new continuity, set in a Darker and EdgierAfter the End world. With the new story comes a massive overhaul of the CO system as well as the units themselves.

The Battalion Wars games (which have their own page) are for the GameCube and Wii and are Real-Time Strategy games with a view and style more reminiscent of a Third-Person Shooter than an overhead game like Warcraft. They form their own separate continuity and story. In addition to commanding your forces in real time, all gameplay is from the point of view of a single unit that the player can switch between at any time, while at the same time actively controlling the viewpoint unit itself.

And This Is For...: in the ending of the first Battalion Wars, Nova punches Ubel for Tundra, then throws a KOing punch for his father.

Aluminum Christmas Trees: The Megatank. There really was a tank the size of a small office building- the "Maus" Land Cruiser. It only had one cannon though; it's next iteration (the Ratte) would have had a turret with multiple cannons.

Aircraft Carriers, which also ferry an air force overseas.note Aircraft carriers work quite differently between Dual Strike and Days of Ruin. They can carry two aircraft in both games, but other than that, they're very different. In Dual Strike, aircraft carriers are powerful indirect attackers with a range of 3-8 squares. In Days of Ruin, aircraft carriers themselves can only attack at close range with rather weak machine guns, but the aircraft they're carrying can launch from it, move, and attack in the same action, assuming that the carrier itself hasn't moved any distance. Aircraft carriers in Days of Ruin can also produce seaplanes, which are capable of attacking any unit in the game for decent damage. To top it off, they repair the aircraft they're carrying every turn, just like an airport.

Mechs in Game Boy Wars 1/2/Turbo can attack air units for cost-effective damage.

Most ships in Game Boy Wars 3, including the Lander, can hit air units for at least decent damage.

Anti-Frustration Feature: The fact that in Days of Ruin, the maximum score for each category is now 150, but the threshold for an S Rank is still 300. This encourages creative tactics that earlier games in the series would have punished (such as rushing in and capping an unguarded HQ), since the perfect scores in the other two categories now make up for the one category that ends up tanking.

To counter that, though, once you fall below what would be considered the "perfect" threshold for each category, the score immediately drops below 100 and continues to drop fast, so you still need to make sure you've got a solid plan since one slip-up can send your score plummeting.

Anti-Villain: Forsythe/Carter in Days of Ruin. Also, most of the characters in Advance Wars bar the protagonists and Sturm.

Apocalyptic Logistics: Days of Ruin states that most of the human population was killed off in the Apocalypse, and the earth itself is mostly just a barren wasteland full of destruction and desolation. However, there's still plenty of machine tool factories and workers who know how to build tanks and artillery, and train infantry for battle.

In the European script, the factories are completely automated, it's soldiers they need. Surviving officers have been training able-bodied refugees to bolster their fighting numbers.

The Nintendo Wars series takes the minimum range and maximum range tropes and sticks to them.

Advance Wars: Artillery has a one-square zone in which it is unable to fire. Rocket trucks' are two squares (as they have longer range).

Art Evolution: The CO portraits went from being rather cartoonish in the first Advance Wars to fairly realistic by Dual Strike. Olaf and Kanbei by far went through the most dramatic evolution, though the other characters got a fair bit of visual upgrading as well.

Artifact Title: Advance Wars: Dual Strike and Days of Ruin are on the Nintendo DS. So why is it still called "Advance Wars"...?

Dual Strike can be abbreviated as "DS", and the "Advance" makes sense since it's a direct sequel to the two on GBA. Days of Ruin has no such justifications, though.

Artificial Stupidity: The APC fetish in the first Advance Wars, as well as the Battlestation's method of attacking the destruction objective in the last mission of Battalion Wars 2.

The second fight against Kanbei in the first game becomes surprisingly easy if you block the chokepoints leading to your base well as he has only a handful of indirects stationed far back and yet clogs the path with his tanks so that his indirects cannot move forward to break your defenses, rendering his superior numbers useless.

The AI also seems to have a pathological fear of sending units to the second front in DS, even when it would be extraordinarily useful to it.

Artistic License – Biology: Viruses cannot make plants grow under people's skin. However, the sole expert who describes it that way only says it spreads "like a virus". It's the others (who are far from biologists) who call it a "plant virus" afterwards.

The Creeper does seem to be heavily based on the real world Cordyceps fungus, which, at least in the ant version of the fungus, causes the ants to go insane and then die, the fruiting body bursting out of their corpses.

Artistic License – Physics: Plasma (Which looks like lightning) arcing between two or more fallen meteors, that block air and land travel. A handwaved barrier that makes at least a modicum more sense than the infamous pipes from previous Advance Wars.

Awesome, but Impractical: Earth and Sky, the Eagle/Sami tag-team power in Dual Strike. Yes, being able to take three turns in a row — with instant captures on the third turn — is very awesome. However, a combined total of seventeen stars' worth of charging (and the very real prospect of an opponent just plopping a unit on important buildings like their HQ) ruins this somewhat.

Several of the more expensive units can be this, depending on availability of cities, but Megatanks really take the cake. They'll waste anything to be sure, but they're really slow and have low fuel and ammo capacity, so they need resupplying often. Many players tend to go for Neotanks instead in Dual Strike, see below.

Battlestations and Strato Destroyers in Battalion Wars. Both soak up punishment about as well as a fortress would, and can destroy anything short of another Battlestation or Strato Destroyer in seconds. The problem is that both are slower than anything else in their respective field, and both are not very maneuverable. In the BS's case, it's also extremely vulnerable to an air attack. It's easier to take out enemy BS's with air units while handling everything else with tanks, and Fighters are normally all you'd ever need short of more precise air-to-ground attacks.

Bad Boss: Deconstructed with Greyfield. He threatens his men with execution for having the Creeper virus (among many other reasons), which leads directly to its rampart spread when the infected keep quiet about it and stay in close contact with the healthy. It gets so bad that Greyfield himself gets it, and Caulder doesn't hesitate to point out the delicious irony/hypocrisy.

Barrier Maiden: Cruisers, as of Days of Ruin, are an almost purely defensive unit whose whole purpose is to protect fellow naval units from their various counters. They have huge firepower and armor bonuses against Submarines and Missile Boats, who otherwise rule the seas, and get the same against anything airborne, while being almost useless against other Cruisers, Battleships or Carriers.

Born Lucky: Nell, and to a lesser extent, her little sister Rachel. And from Super Famicom Wars, their spiritual predecessor Caroline.

Boring, but Practical: Infantry spams — thankfully, not a problem in Game Boy Wars 3 despite the Mech being able to move and blast armored stuff from two spaces away on the same turn.

COs with short power bars also stand out — such as Colin, Sensei, Adder, and Sasha with their two-star regular CO powers, and Sonja, Adder, Hachi, and Koal with five-star Super CO Powers.

Bowdlerise: The North American release of Days of Ruin replaces the "DAMN!" text bubble when units get ambushed in Fog Of War with "NO!".

Bragging Rights Reward: Dual Strike only provides a wallpaper for obtaining all 300 medals; some of those 300 medals have borderline ridiculous conditions to obtain.

Days of Ruin is even worse. Getting all the medals doesn't get you anything.

Braids of Action: All three known Lazurian COs in Days of Ruin / Dark Conflict have a very thin braided ponytail, and judging by the fact that the generic Lazurian soldier portrait doesn't have one, this seems to be a cultural mark of status exclusively for commanding officers in the Lazurian army.

Brother–Sister Team: Colin and Sasha in Dual Strike. And their abilities really mesh: Sasha can rack up tons of money and deplete her foe's CO bar, while Colin gets discounts on his units. Can anyone say Zerg Rush?

And that's not counting their Dual Strike (Trust Fund), where Sasha gets money for every enemy unit destroyed and Colin gets more power based on how much money he has. How's that for synergy?

Brutal Bonus Level: For the first three Advance Wars games, beating the main campaign unlocks the Hard Campaign. Usually these are just the same levels, slightly modified to give the computer an advantage.

The degree of brutality goes down as the games go on, though. Advance Campaign from Advance Wars is hellishly difficult and unfair. Hard Campaign from Black Hole Rising is tougher, but still a balanced challenge. Hard campaign from Dual Strike tends to be easier than the normal campaign, as you are allowed to choose any pair of COs.

On top of the Advance Campaign, there is a bonus mission in the first Advance Wars called Rivals!, where Eagle challenges Andy to a battle. On normal mode, it's already pretty tough, with Eagle having more cities on his side to build an army from. Advance Campaign Rivals! is incredibly unfair, since Eagle starts with a MASSIVE army, and you only have the same three infantry you would in normal mode. In fog.

Bonus Mission 3 in the first Battalion Wars.

Butt-Monkey: Davis/Cole in Days of Ruin, who is treated as a loser in love to the point of not having his name remembered well, and also can't stand up to Greyfield killing soldiers along with Brenner, and later ends up dying from the Creeper virus. Of course, the only indication of the latter in the European version is his lack of later appearances after the equivalent scene.

Cerebus Syndrome: The plot got somewhat more serious between the original Advance Wars and Black Hole Rising, the plot between Black Hole Rising and Dual Strike was even more so, and Days of Ruin was as serious as ever.

Character Development: Nearly all the COs got fleshed out between Advance Wars 1 and 2, especially the non-Orange Star ones that the character now gets to control. Olaf went from a bumbling villain to a grumpy but competent leader, Kanbei went from silly levels of idiocy to an honorable but tactically-dense emperor, Eagle went from a revenge-driven Jerkass that never thought things through to a more reasonable team player, and so on.

Character Select Forcing: In the first GBA game, if the player selects Sami or Max and loses on the first battle against Drake, Nell will outright tell the player: "How about using Andy next time?" This makes sense since Drake's power damages units and Andy's power repairs them, but a Bonus Boss can only be unlocked if the player uses only Sami for the next few missions.

Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: While they're still playable outside of Campaign mode, Flak and Adder mysteriously disappear from Black Hole for the duration of Dual Strike's campaign. Possibly justified in that their abilities were too similar to Black Hole newcomers Jugger and Koal/Zak, and the newbies were more integral to the new Big Bad. (Which begs the question why Flak and Adder are in the game to begin with.)

Climax Boss: In Dual Strike, Koal and Lash in the mission where you destroy your first Black Crystal, and Kindle and Koal in mission 22 where you destroy a Black Obelisk for the first time. Days of Ruin has The Beast, Forsythe, and Greyfield, all of which counts as Disc One Final Bosses. Each of these serve to end some plot points, wrap up an act, introduce more questions, and the victory music that plays when you win is more upbeat and triumphant.

Cloning Blues: Barely touched upon in the first 3 Advance Wars games, but a huge part of Days of Ruin.

To clarify, the main characters were all cloned by the enemy in the first 3 games to lead enemy troops, but the issues with that were never discussed.

Comeback Mechanic: The CO Power system was partially this in the GBA games and Dual Strike, since the meter would fill up more from damage the CO's army has sustained than damage they are dealing. Days Of Ruin on the other hand, completely averts this, as the meter would only fill up when a CO deals damage towards their opponent, and sustained damage has no effect on the meter.

Companion Cube: Penny with her Mr. Bear. One case where an European renaming is not necessary, as the European translation didn't add that particular Woolseyism.

The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: there's a case that helps the player in Beachhead in Battalion Wars 1; the CPU-controlled Artillery can snipe off the infantry climbing up the hilly terrain that makes seeing them difficult, from inside the fort on top of the hills. However, in Battalion Wars 2, while there is another case that involves a playable unit in the last mission, it does not help the player whatsoever: the Battlestation attacks the guns that fire the weak green lasers coming from the Mining Spider before attacking the blasted digging machine itself, but you don't get to aim at these guns whatsoever. This makes no sense because the Fighters you get are harder, albeit generally more rewarding, to control than the no-brainer Battlestation, but at least the Heavy Tanks fire at the guns too if commanded to attack the Spider.

As a more conventional example, in the first two Advance Wars, the CPU-controlled armies are not affected by Fog of War and can attack your units even if none of their units would be able to see them (although they still have to uncover your units hiding in forests before they can attack it - the computer acts as if they don't exist otherwise). Zigzagged in Dual Strike, where the AI still knows where your units are but now has to play by the rules when it comes to attacking them, and completely averted in Days of Ruin where the enemy is just as affected by Fog of War as you are.

On a related note, ever notice how the computer will rarely leave its battleship within range of that sub you've had submerged for the past three turns?

Cool Old Guy: Sensei and Hachi in Black Hole Rising and Dual Strike; Forsythe/Carter in Days of Ruin

Cool Airship: The Great Owl from Days of Ruin could possibly qualify as this, considering it's a gigantic flying laboratory/bomber... with a hangar bay big enough to have a full-scale battle with tanks and rockets and stuff.

Of particular note is the Missile unit from the Nintendo/Advance series, which is not only ludicrously specialized but also almost completely useless at what it does. note Missiles are an anti-air indirect unit whose range is shorter than the movement of every air unit save the T Copter, which can still dodge in under their Arbitrary Minimum Range. B Copters can swoop in and nail them with no trouble, while Bombers and Fighters can practically dance around them. To serve their intended role, they require bait and usually must work in pairs, while an equivalent cost of Anti-Airs would be vastly more useful. Their range boost in Days of Ruin served to take them from "worthless" to "ludicrously situational".

Crutch Character: Game Boy Wars 3 in particular has some, although units are generic.

Cutscene Incompetence: Colin in Black Hole Rising and Dual Strike: Always portrayed as under confident, put upon by his big sister Sasha — yet in game terms he's one of the most powerful COs, to the point of being a problem in terms of game balance.

Kanbei as well. His troops are extremely strong, despite being more expensive, and yet, Kanbei is constantly lectured by his daughter Sonja, and in one scene, when Sonja runs in with important news, Kanbei's first response is to ask if she's seen his sock.This could just be Crippling Overspecialization. Kanbei is a master commander who's an airhead with anything that isn't war.

Darker and Edgier: Days of Ruin/Dark Conflict. Done reasonably well. The ads even used this trope as a selling point!

Could be argued Black Hole Rising did it as well; the graphic style became less cartoony. And if that doesn't sell the point, Dual Strike definitely plays this trope straight: the plot is much darker (although nowhere near Days of Ruin's), the music is less whimsical (even the pre-existing themes get remastered), and the animations are much more mature than even Black Hole Rising.

Darth Vader Clone: Sturm bears a considerable resemblance, with a full face mask and a cloak that covers his body. The face mask he wears in 2 resembles Vader's helmet even more so. Von Bolt makes an interesting comparison as Palpatine, being a frail old man in black but who still possesses great power despite his withered body.

Death of a Thousand Cuts: Played straight in the Advance Wars series, averted in the Battalion Wars series. It's possible to destroy a gunship with a tank round, but a bunch of grunts firing on it will only serve to be a mild annoyance until they're blown to smithereens. Unless, of course, you only have one anti-air unit left and need all the help/distraction you can get.

Played straight in Battalion Wars by the combat roll (essentially a third-person circle strafe).

Developers' Foresight: In the tutorial missions of each game, there's dialogue ready for every possibility the player can come up with (outside of the mandatory actions, of course). Amusingly, if the player decides to deplete all their units' fuel in maps with fixed units, there is special dialogue with your teacher expressing either bewilderment or fury that you deliberately wasted valuable resources just to see what would happen.

Dieselpunk: Some parts of the artstyle of the first three games and the Duster unit from Days of Ruin invokes this design.

Disproportionate Retribution: Rachel and Koal have the worst tagging firepower penalty in the game. Olaf and Lash get a 20% penalty to firepower when tagging because Lash used some weird invention to rearrange and destroy his hometown. Eagle and Hawke get a 30% penalty when tagging because Hawke knocked Green Earth around quite a bit. What did Koal do to Rachel for a 35% penalty? He DISSED HER FACE. Sure, she's going to need some lotion for that burn, but it's nothing compared to the previous two penalties mentioned.

Hawke in Black Hole Rising is regarded as Sturm's top CO, the leader of all the other Black Hole COs, and a dangerous tactical genius. Sturm, however, is considerably more powerful.

Kindle/Candy in Dual Strike is second in command of the Bolt Guard, under Von Bolt.

Tabitha/Larisa in Days of Ruin/Dark Conflict is Caulder's oldest child, and a very dangerous and capable CO, despite (or perhaps because) of her arrogance.

Ubel in Battalion Wars.

Early Installment Weirdness: Pre-Advance Wars games featured a much different combat system where attacking and defending units fired simultaneously, rather than the now much more familiar attacker-first set-up. This gave indirect units a much greater emphasis on the offensive, as their primary function of weakening opposing units prior to direct engagement became utterly necessary to prevent stalemates. One could, conceivably, also do this with sheer weight of numbers, but such an advantage was highly unlikely due to the balanced nature of most maps.

The idea of COs with different abilities and strategies wasn't introduced until Super Famicom Wars. Prior installments simply had the factions as Cosmetically Different Sides, and even then, the default COs of each faction were all still the same, there just happened to be three others who had unique abilities.

The first Advance Wars had you play as a Non-Entity General, a "strategic advisor" to Orange Star who you named yourself, much like the Tactician in the first internationally-released Fire Emblem game. This was dropped from all subsequent games. Additionally, the Campaign was very different to later games. The tutorial was separate from the main campaign rather than integrated into it, most cmaps were pre-deploy (You start with a large number of units, instead of having to build them yourself), only Orange Star was playable, there were branching routes depending on which characters you selected for which missions and Hard Mode (Advanced Mode here) dropped the Power and Technique scores entirely and only ranked you on Speed. (It's also MUCH more difficult than the Hard Modes of later games)

Earn Your Happy Ending: DoR/DC, which ends with all the enemy forces defeated, the deadly virus being cured and people being able to grow crops just as the sun appears again. And boy, did they make you work for it.

Justified in that she was basically designed to be a walking, breathing database of military information. Other than what she picks up after Will finds her, that's all she knows.

Easy Logistics: While every unit uses up fuel (or rations, for infantry) and ammunition, it is very easy to resupply units. APCs resupply any units adjacent to them at the beginning of the turn. (Or resupply one unit manually that they drive up to.) Including battleships and aircraft, with no explanation how a ground-based vehicle can refuel a fighter jet. As well, the APC has infinite supplies, and can rearm and refuel indefinitely all units indefinitely.

Days of Ruin makes the APC a Rig. The same benefits as before, but now it has the supplies to build one temporary airport or seaport.

It's been joked about to no end how the APCs are incapable of resupplying themselves, for some odd reason.

Escort Mission: The Advance Wars series has some, and there's quite a few in Battalion Wars 2.

That last bit is called attention to in Black Hole Rising; Flak mentions that Max strongly reminds him of himself, "Except... I'm me." The fact that they're so similar is implied to be the cause of their mutual hatred, as well.

Evil Old Folks: Von Bolt. Caulder may or may not be old, but he's certainly not young. Kaiser Vlad is allegedly 100 years old.

Evil Versus Oblivion: Ultimately what drives Hawke to betray Von Bolt. Hawke has no delusions about the kind of person he is, but he also cares about the people he leads (having one of the few healing CO powers) and the damage he may do. Von Bolt doesn't care about what damage he causes as long as what he's focused on gets achieved, and thus has no problem turning the world into a wasteland to achieve his own goals. Put simply, Hawke is aware that there may be nothing to rule after Von Bolt has his way with things, and even before being betrayed he had second guesses about the plans that were being made. also a major reason why he betrayed and 'killed' Sturm at the end of Advance Wars 2, although if Sturm survived, which he did not, encountering Von Bolt would have resulted in the two villains trying to kill each other. Sturm was trying to take everyone with him to the grave by self-destructing his base at the end of Advance Wars 2, which would have also killed many Black Hole soldiers. By offing his employer, Hawke prevented that from happening.

No Experience Points for Medic: in Super Famicom Wars and especially Days of Ruin. Subverted, however, in Game Boy Wars 3, as units gain experience by performing tasks besides combat.

Expy: Several of the Days of Ruin COs have similarities — rather jarring ones — with the earlier Advance Wars ones.

Also, Nell (aka Catherine) from Advance Wars is an expy of Caroline from Super Famicom Wars.

The Green Earth COs are an air combat specialist that constantly bickers with his friend who is a ground specialist and a fat guy that specializes in naval combat. They are basically the crew of Getter Robo.

For the units, every single unit in the Advance series that isn't from Black Hole is an Expy of a real life piece of military hardware.

Pointless Weakness: Rachel's extra costs for extra repairs, Max's indirect issues, Kanbei's higher unit cost on maps without factories, and Eagle and Drake's sea/air weakness on maps where that doesn't exist. Most infamously, Colin's slightly inferior units for slightly cheaper units that can Zerg Rush until the cows come home. Air units try to avert this issue with themselves with fuel upkeep, with varying results for each installment of the entire series.

Unbalanced skillset: COs who favor one unit type over another.

Luck-based balance: some in the Advance Wars games and even in Super Famicom Wars. One-Hit Kill attacks generally rely on luck in both.

The Buggy in Game Boy Wars 3; cheap and fast, but its defense is right in between that of the Infantry and the Mech, if you can believe it.

And Recon units in the Advance Wars series, having the second highest movement rate in the game (8, with fighters having 9) but being exceptionally weak in terms of fighting anything armored as well as or better than a tank. However, this speed only applies on roads, as their movement type makes them easily slowed down by all other terrain, including mere plains.

Bikes as well. They have the most move points of any infantry unit, but have no way to counter vehicles.

Frothy Mugs of Water: A rather squicky example after destroying the black obelisk in Dual Strike, in that they didn't even change the color of the "water", making it seem like "Omega Land's Best Water" was still disgusting and contaminated by the ravaging of the land Black Hole had been doing.

Gameplay and Story Integration: Days of Ruin explains why your units from one campaign mission don't carry over to the next (factories are automated, and the units produced by them automatically power down when they leave the area. For Infantry and Mechs, their weapons don't work if taken out of the area).

Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Sturm in the first Advance Wars. After fighting the various countries with hints of an enemy that can clone COs, the final boss is revealed to be an alien general that drops meteors on people. No attempt is made to explain where he comes from, or why he has no fellow aliens with him in the first game, or why he is able to recruit human generals in the second game. He just... is. Not that anyone minds, given his badassery.

Ironically, Mechs and Infantry often get used to defend frontlines, because their defensive power per unit cost is better than most units. Other, more traditional examples of Glass Cannons include Artillery, Rockets, and Missiles.

Anti-Tanks in Days of Ruin, as a side effect of Crippling Overspecialization. They're sturdy against tanks, but they're extremely vulnerable to attacks from Infantry or Bikes.

Anti-Air units in basically every game. They're great against infantry and, as the name implies, air units of all kinds, but they can't take a hit from anything more powerful than a Recon (and yes, that includes Mechs).

Game Boy Wars 3 has quite a few examples:

The Mech, of course. They get to snipe armored stuff from a small distance too.

The Humvee, sometimes known as the Battle Car. It has the same armor class as the infantry (although more defense too), since any vehicles that don't look like ones designed primarily for war do; this results in the Anti-Air Tanks being able to shred it with a first attack. But it's also armed with an anti-tank weapon as its primary. Its promoted form also has a miniature anti-air machine gun.

Any land indirect, of course. The Humvee can One-Hit Kill any of them. Of course, in this game, they get to move and attack on the same turn.

The Tank Destroyer isn't this power-wise, but it is when it comes to Initiative, a stat used to determine attack order. If it moves anywhere far, kiss the first attack advantage goodbye.

Air units in general. If they're attacked up close and right away (or can't deal any damage anyway), expect at least 6 HPs of damage to be taken, unless it's the Attacker S, which would be this game's standard Bomber anyway if not for being a promoted unit. Attackers are the example in this group because they can attack anything but Submarines for good damage, but have lower defense than Fighters.

The Aegis Warship is an odd case of making itself this; its defense ratings are among the highest in the game, but it has a powerful weapon that has massive attack power against ships: 7 HPs of damage in its own matchup, even and can fire away from a whopping seven spaces.

Submarines, although in Japan-only installments and when submerged in the Advance Wars games, they're Nigh Invulnerable as long as they don't run into a Cruiser.

Air units in general (all games) only can be attacked by a few types of units but get shredded fast by them. In the Advance Wars series, even Fighters (the least squishy plane unit) take upwards of 70% damage from a Missile barrage. Air to Air engagements take this to the logical extreme of "whoever fires first, wins", as one would expect of a Glass Cannon duel.

Good Versus Good: Played with in Days of Ruin. The start of the second arc begins with several battles between the New Rubinelle Army (who Brenner's Wolves side with) and Lazuria. At first, the latter look like the villains, but it turns out that the NRA — on the orders of Greyfield —actually shot first. The Lazurians are just trying to defend their homeland and turn out to be sympathetic. Brenner and Forsythe both lament that they are forced to fight each other despite both being honorable and wanting the conflict to end.

Gotta Catch 'Em All: Hacking suggests that the All Unit Medal in Game Boy Wars 3 is obtained this way — and it's gold plated.

Guide Dang It: in Battalion Wars, how to have your other units attack more actively.

Also, a meta-game based example in Days of Ruin: the Anti-Tank's cost ineffectiveness against infantry.

And Game Boy Wars 3 has a few Medals as this. Check the Guide Dang It page for more details.

A weird case for veterans of the first three Advance Wars games; the scoring for ranks wasn't that hard to figure out, but come Days Of Ruin, they were reworked so that much confusion was had over suddenly sucky scores. The Technique score now rewards you for using less units overall than your opponent, not how few you lose, meaning that the usual strategy of spamming Infantry toward the end of missions to make up for losses actually worked against the player.

Heel–Face Turn: Olaf at the end of Advance Wars, Hawke and Lash during Dual Strike, Penny/Lili and Cyrus during Days of Ruin.

And Battalion Wars too, resulting in the hilarious impression that your character is some sort of bodyjacking ghost whom the Western frontier have tricked into helping them and kept from leaving the battlefield using some kind of magical Invisible Wall.

Also, Olaf in the field training mode of Advance Wars. He places units in locations making them useless, leaves his HQ totally unprotected, forgets to fuel his air units, and leaves his units hanging out right in the line of fire, among other things.

This is especially jarring after Olaf is fleshed out more in "Black Hole Rising", where he is shown as a competent commander who leads his country to oust the Black Hole invaders, and helps save the entire world.

Kanbei in Advance Wars also holds the Idiot Ball for his mini-arc. It culminates in a fitting mission name called "Kanbei's Error?" where Kanbei deploys a ground-unit producing factory in the middle of an island with no easy way to evacuate troops produced there.

Instant-Win Condition: HQ Captures in all the games, but also factories, Black Cannons, and so on from Black Hole Rising onwards.

Want to piss off your opponent in Dual Strike? Sami and Eagle. Load infantry into T-copter, move it. Use Tag power with Eagle, move again, drop infantry near enemy HQ. Switch to Sami, insta-capture (perhaps literally) out of left field. Note: doing so only works once and may result in bodily injury to you.

Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: Pipes in Black Hole Rising and Dual Strike. Air units can't travel over them (long-range units like Artillery and Rockets can fire over them, however. Particularly egregious in Dual Strike with the Piperunner unit - not only does it run along pipes, but in the battle animations involving the Piperunner, the pipe looks little more daunting than a steep humpback ridge.

Done a bit more logically in Days of Ruin, which features arcs of electricity (referred to as plasma) between meteor chunks, which units cannot pass through or over, and at least in this case it's plausible that a raging storm of plasma might be dangerous to fly over. Unlike pipes, though, plasma arcs can be erased by destroying the meteors emitting them.

Speaking of ships, bridges of the first Advance Wars continuity cannot be sailed under by ships, even submarines. Pre-battle unit placement ignores this, leading to the 'battleship in a lake' meme.

I Was Just Passing Through: In Black Hole Rising, Hawke describes turning up after faking his own death, killing Sturm, and saving everyone else's lives as "a test of his power".

Javier: "Charge into the toothy maw. For now it is time for a glorious hindspanking!".

Late-Arrival Spoiler: In the first Advance Wars, the presence of a fifth faction was a plot twist. The sequel outright puts the Black Hole name in it's subtitle, and has them as the only opposing faction for the entire campaign.

Lightning Bruiser: Sturm, who levels forests instead of walking through them. For units, there are Neotanks and Bombers.

Luck-Based Mission: 100% Power in any Battalion Wars 2 mission where the final objective is to capture a facility capable of making units respawn fast.

The final mission of Days Of Ruin is nearly impossible unless you follow a day-to-day guide, and even if you follow the walkthrough for every single move you make, you can still lose.

In terms of units, Days of Ruin also introduces the Duster and the Seaplane, which are both capable of attacking every single unit in the game. While neither of them are truly outstanding and will lose against a specialized Anti-Air counter, they are enough to give everything that isn't a Fighter, Cruiser or Anti-Air a reasonably tough fight.

Stealth Planes from Dual Strike were actually the first unit that could engage anything, and could do so with reasonable success. However, they were also outperformed by at least one or two other, more specialized units, but their primary advantage lies in their ability to disappear and strike from anywhere.

Meganekko: Sonja in the non-American releases for the first game and Dual Strike. Her alt costume in the American version of Dual Strike retains this.

Kanbei can also be seen as this; his units are more powerful, but also more expensive, meaning he'll be slower in getting really powerful units into action.

Constructors in Game Boy Wars 3 are this in a sense, not so much being decent in combat as they are more expensive than the Humvee and have only 5 Movement Power in combination with the worst Movement Type out of land units, but they can build up properties to improve repair jobs and funding, and also alter the terrain to speed up the arrival of reinforcements. Of course, they get five Beginner Mode maps dedicated to their usage for this—not exactly a beginner's unit.

And let's not forget the Train in Super Famicom Wars. Even though it has the highest Movement Power amount out of any unit in the series (even beating out the Fighter S in Game Boy Wars 3), it can only move on railroads and Train Stations. To make up for this, however, the Train has a powerful cannon with the same range as the Battleship, as well as the ability to transport 2 land units.

Mildly Military: The COs in Advance Wars seem to treat the various conflicts more like a wargame than an actual war. Grit doesn't really take it seriously at all, Drake brushes off an invasion to sunbathe, Sensei spends most of his fights with Adder teasing him with interesting facts about unit production, and in general the COs seem to downplay the fighting into being something like contests between them rather than actual warfare. The few that take things seriously are treated as humorously straight-laced.

Military Maverick: Grit regularly backchats to Olaf, while Drake's response to an impending invasion in Advance Wars is to continue sunbathing. Most of the COs have a bit of this.

Grit should be obvious, though, he wears a cowboy hat.

Mission Control: COs in Advance Wars that aren't actively fighting take this role.

Mook Commander: This is how the "CO Zone" mechanic works in Advance Wars: Days Of Ruin. It's only excepted by Tabitha, who needs to rack up some damage before she can expand her Zone beyond the lone unit she's in.

Moral Dissonance: It's unclear whether or not people actually die when units are destroyed during the game's battles. Sometimes the characters care, and sometimes they don't.

Several times in Dual Strike, you meet up with allied COs who demand that you fight them to prove your own worth. Though these could be handwaved as friendly practice wargames, the battle animations are completely and totally unchanged, creating the disturbing possibility that the characters treat their soldiers as chess pieces. Which is about as well as players treat their units. One of the worst examples is Mission 12, where you fight two friendly COs because one of them wants to test you a bit. What makes this case noteworthy is that it's also the mission that introduces Missile Silos.

In Days of Ruin, the dissonance is removed. The bad COs treat soldiers like expendables and toys. The good COs agonize over the losses, recognizing the sheer pointlessness of several conflicts. Furthermore, it's all but explicitly stated that all units but infantry are remotely controlled unmanned vehicles built in automated factories.

My Rules Are Not Your Rules: In Dual Strike, units which are controlled by an AI are able to load their air units into the naval aircraft transport units on an allied team (including your own units controlled by you). When under the control of the player they appear colored as your own units (despite that fact that they are not yours) in the status window and the menu. When unloaded they momentarily appear as the same color as the transport unit then resume their normal coloring. When the transport unit is owned by an AI player, they will always unload the unit after they move it unless they are attacking another unit, they also have no problem unloading an aircraft unit in range of twenty or more enemy carriers and missiles.

No Campaign for the Wicked: All games in the Advance Wars series, including Days of Ruin. In the first Battalion Wars, however, you could play as other countries including Xylvania and Iron Legion in certain bonus missions. There's also an entire campaign (albeit with 3 missions) in the sequel where you play as the Iron Legion.

One Password Attempt Ever: In Advance Wars: Days of Ruin (Advance Wars: Dark Conflict in Europe/Australia), The Heroes come across an underground bunker that has supplies they desperately need. The problem is, the bunker cannot be breached and they can only try the password twice. First, Brenner/O'Brian tries his military access code. When that is rejected, the team is left with one guess for a ten-digit password. Luckily Will/Ed had been talking to Isabella/Catleia an she had been muttering a ten-digit number over and over. With no other option, they enter the code. When the doors open, the team is left baffled at how she could've possibly known that code.

Only Fatal to Adults: This is inverted with the early version of Creeping Derangea, which can only infect people under the age of 20. Completely averted with the later version, which works faster and can infect anyone regardless of age.

Patriotic Fervor: Olaf is a true blue patriot through and through, even singing his country's national anthem in one of his Dual Strike winquotes. Which is strange when you remember that, during the first game's tutorial, Nell mentions he used to work for Orange Star...

Peninsula of Power Leveling: In Dual Strike, leveling up C Os is ridiculously easy on the campaign level "Muck Amok". You could gain up to 1000 exp on the normal version and 2400 on the Hard Campaign version thanks to the huge numbers of Oozium. With the game's save system it's fairly easy to repeat the mission until all the C Os are level 10.

The Plague: Endoflorescens terribilis (also known as Creeping Derangea and Green Thumb) is a virus that causes parasitic flowers to grow from inside a person which soon break out through the skin as vines covering their limbs and body. It is later revealed to be a Bio-Weapon made by Dr. Caulder that failed due to its inherent flaw of photophobia which prevented it from thriving until after the apocalypse blotted out the sun.

Polluted Wasteland: Xylvania in Battalion Wars is revealed to be like this, due to Vlad's abuse of the environment for military resources. In fact, one of his primary reasons for expansion is to gain more resources.

Although, oddly enough, Old Xylvania looks just about the same in Battalion Wars 2, except that everything's on fire instead of poisonous and green.

Bizarrely, it looks like this 200 years before Vlad's stuff, and had steampunk orcs.

Similarly, the Black Crystals in Dual Strike turn all of the land around them into desert.

If this goes on too long, you get Wasteland. The water turns green (red on the map), the trees die, the ground is dry and hard, and all the bases look abandoned when we see them in battles. Yes, all this just because some old guy wants to live forever.

The Power of Friendship: In Dual Strike Tag powers become stronger or weaker depending on the relationship between the two C Os. The highest power levels are actually given to Tag Powers between C Os related by blood, which gives it shades of The Power of Love.

Power Trio: Particularly in Black Hole Rising, each good guy team seems to have one.

Orange Star: more of a power quartet, but...

Id: Andy/Max.

Ego: Nell.

Superego: Sami.

Blue Moon:

Id with a dash of Superego: Olaf.

Ego with a dash of Superego: Colin.

Superego with a dash of Id: Grit.

Yellow Comet:

Id: Kanbei

Ego: Sensei

Superego: Sonja

Green Earth:

Id: Eagle.

Ego: Drake.

Superego: Jess.

Also Black Hole:

Id: Flak.

Ego: Lash.

Superego: Adder.

Also in Battalion Wars, although not all factions are trios. (Note that these also fall under Two Guys and a Girl.)

Puttin On The Reich: The uniforms of the Black Hole C Os draw heavily from Nazi Germany. The Black Hole symbol even resembles a swastika!

The Quiet One: Hawke in Black Hole Rising and Dual Strike. Gage/Trak in Days of Ruin

Quirky Miniboss Squad: Adder, Lash, and Flak in Black Hole Rising; Koal, Lash, and Jugger in Dual Strike, Caulder/Stolos' children in Days of Ruin also count, although you only actually fight two of them.

Schizo Tech: Mostly in the first three Advance Wars games. You have no shortage of missile units and even stealth aircraft, but once you get to the naval combat, it goes right back to WWII - big guns and bombers. Fixed, to some extent, with missile boats and the massive retool of how Carriers and Battleships work in Days of Ruin. note In previous games, Battleships worked like a traditional artillery unit, only able to move or shoot on a turn, albeit possessing an unmatched range of 9 spaces. As of Days of Ruin they can now both move and shoot, making them mobile and incredibly potent fire support, and while their weapon range was reduced to 5, that's on top of their 5 movement, giving them an effective range of 10. Carriers, in turn, used to be an anti-air Battleship that could refuel and arm (but not repair) aircraft with 8 range; vastly better than Missiles, but overall very gimmicky and never actually useful for their staggering cost. Days of Ruin turns them into a mobile airport that can do everything for all air units and produce the "decent against everything" Seaplane, while also reducing their cost. This, effectively, turns naval combat into high-speed battles of maneuver, rather than slow, methodical artillery duels.

Scissors Cuts Rock: Many COs' specialities can be used to, if not turn around the Rock-Paper-Scissors triangles, then at least even them out (witness Sami and Sensei's mechs against AAs). Missions like this are also used to challenge the player: most of Max's missions against Grit in Advance Wars take this form, and from Advance Wars 2 we have Sea Fortress for Eagle (the air specialist fighting through an AA-heavy defense) and Navy Vs. Air for Drake (the naval specialist fighting against a heavy air force, when air tends to beat naval normally).

Colin, who uses his money to do things like One-Hit KO Megatanks with Mechs.

Selective Condemnation: In Dual Strike, the Big Bad Von Bolt dares you to shoot him in order to stop his evil scheme, claiming it would make you as bad as he is. This in spite of the hundreds, possibly thousands, of enemy units you've killed and allied units destroyed under your command to get this far. Not to mention the deaths that would be caused if he did succeed.

Sheathe Your Sword / Outside-the-Box Tactic: In Black Hole Rising, you can win "Two Week Test" by doing absolutely nothing except ending your turn. It works, without fail, and it's a magnificent display of the AI's ability to screw itself over, but of course your ranking at the end will suck.

Shout-Out: A possibly inadvertant one to the Doom Patrol: Dr. Caulder. It's hardly a common name...

Another perhaps accidental one to the Bible: Rachel and Jake are the names of the first two COs you have access to in Dual Strike.

Ship Sinking: In the very game that introducted the pair, the Jake & Rachel ship is sunk if you choose them in the final mission.

Ship Tease: What primarily inspires Andy to lead the Orange Star Charge against Lord Sturm in Advance Wars? "Sonja's in danger!"

The exchange between Hawke and Lash in Days of Ruin..

Hawke: Lash. I'm sorry. I have mistreated you. Had I not strong armed you into this... you would not have been called a traitor. I made excuses. Used you to my own end, so that I could continue to live.

Lash: Aw, that's OK. Don't worry about it. I wouldn't be doing all this if I didn't like it, ya' know? I'm not an easy chick to push around... I only do what I want to do. And I'm here now because I want to fight with you... So let's fight!

Shoot the Dog: In one of the endings of Dual Strike, Hawke shoots Von Bolt's life-support system because Jake can't bring himself to. Given he also kills Sturm at the end of Advance Wars 2, he seems to be making rather a habit of this. Note that this is averted if Jake chooses to shoot Von Bolt. (Also in Days of Ruin, when Lin leads the final battle against Greyfield/Sigismundo and executes him rather than leave it up to Will/Ed.)

Although this is somewhat justified; real life armies don't have that many female officers either. Also averted in Days of Ruin, where exactly half of the COs are female.

The female COs also tend to be Closer to Earth (with the exception of the female villains). And Orange Star's commander-in-chief (Nell) is female.

Lampshaded in Battalion Wars, where Nova's promotion of Mjr. Nelly to CO is a Really Big Deal to the traditionalist Tundrans.

SNK Boss: Sturm in both of his appearances. In the first game, he gives all of his units a free offense boost, but lowers their defense, and has a CO power that drops in a huge meteor on your highest concentration of units, though the playable version of him is much weaker. In Black Hole Rising, he gives all of his units a major offense and defense boost with no drawbacks (no weakening other units or raising their price like other COs) and only has his slow-charging Super-CO power, no normal one, but that one is all he needs. He calls in meteor again, which like before hits the highest concentration of his enemies units, knocking 8/10 of their max health, doesn't hurt his units while also giving them even more an power and defense boost. Unlike in his first appearance, the playable version is just as strong as the one from the campaign. Subverted with Dual Strike; Von Bolt is no wimp, but not as powerful as Sturm. Played straight with Caulder in Days of Ruin, however. He has a 3 by 3 CO-zone that gives all of his units, regardless of type, the highest boost their power and defense in the game, and repairs them by 50% of their max health each turn (though this can be used against him somewhat, as the healing takes funds). His zone never increases and he has no CO-power, but what he has is more than enough. He and Sturm are both banned from tournaments involving their respective games.

Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Advance Wars 2 has Sturm and his 4 subordinates, each of which is in charge of invading one of the countries. Naturally, the continent facing the most incompetent (story-wise) one of them gets liberated first and it gets more difficult from there. This is even noticeable in the enemy AI: Flak doesn't take advantage of his factory and produces cheap units. Adder, on the other hand, deploys a Battleship against you. On day 3.

The Beast's theme is a dark, menacing track very fitting of its original owner. It's reused once again later in the game for another CO - Davis, the cowardly, somewhat good natured subordinate to the main villain, and the one character in the game that couldn't be less suited to it.

Spoony Bard: Dual Strike in particular. Game Boy Wars 3 also has this, but has a higher variety of units and only 2 or 3 of them are plagued by this trope.

Stone Wall: The MB Tank, particularly in Game Boy Wars 3, a game virtually full of Glass Cannon units no less.

Super Soldiers: Days of Ruin has a twist on this. Caulder's "children" are super commanders, meant for command room action. Though they are still capable of feats of superhuman strength and speed.

Suspiciously Small Army: Very guilty of this. No more than 50 units under your control ever. Note, however, that every unit in the Advance Wars games except for Megatanks/Wartanks/APCs/Ships is a literal unit composed of no fewer than ten of whatever you're specifically talking about.

Technopath: Caulder's children are implied to be some form of this this in two instances: The first when a baker who used to see Isabella, Caulder, Penny, Cyrus and Tabitha in town mentions that if they went near weapons, they exploded, and the second when Caulder states that his children are capable of commanding hundreds of automated vehicles at once far more effectively than normal humans because, apparently, they can somehow bypass the normal process of communication that causes confusion.

Theme Music Power-Up: Whenever a CO Power is activated in any of the Advance Wars games, it's time to RAWK! Evil characters even get their own version that's a bit darker and heavier.

The Theme Park Version: Every nation in Battalion Wars is this, with the Western Frontier as the US, the Tundran Territories as Soviet Russia, the Solar Empire as a combination of China and Japan, the Anglo Isles as Britain, and Xylvania as WWII-era Germany... but kinda sorta vampires!

Advance Wars pre-Days of Ruin had trappings of this as well, though not as strong as in Battalion Wars. Orange Star is America, although they suffer the least from this, since they were the sole protagonist country of the first game. Blue Moon is Russia and Canada, while Yellow Comet is Japan. Oddly enough, Green Earth is an amalgam of all of WWII Europe, despite that including opposing forces in real life. Since Green Earth turn out to be good guys, the only influences from Nazi Germany come from military tactics; Eagle has a strong air force and a power that allows his units to take another turn to represent blitzkrieg.

Also, when Javier is talking to Max in Dual Strike, he mentions good sausage and pig as well as a castle, hinting at European countrysides. Max later notes he isn't able to go on his food and root beer tour, implying influence from Germany.

Those Wacky Nazis: While not technically Nazis, the Xylvanian commanders from Battalion Wars cover most of the character types.

And a few Black Hole COs at the very least dress in a manner clearly meant to suggest Nazis — Flak (grunt soldier), Adder (officer), and Sturm (general) most obviously.

Green Earth is also EXTREMLY German in their dresscode. Long coats, Stahlhelme, and the like. Also, Jess fom Green Earth is especially good with tanks who both shoot harder and go faster, making it very easy to blitz.

One of Sturm's Colors in Advance Wars 2 give him a Nazi hat.

Don't tell me you didn't think "HITLER!" the first time you saw Admiral Greyfield from Days of Ruin...

From all the way back in Super Famicom Wars, the default Yellow Comet CO was a man in a snappy uniform with a toothbrush 'stache by the name of "Hetler".

Timed Mission: all missions in Game Boy Wars 3, and a few in Advance Wars series; most cases in terms of turns, not actual time.

Dual Strike is the only installment with an actual timer in normal game play, although Days of Ruin also uses a timer in wifi-play to prevent stalling.

Although in Dual Strike the timer is set for such a long time you can basically start the battle, have a shower, walk the dog, go to work, have an extended summer vacation and the timer still won't run out.

That's only true of the first timed mission, though. The second one, Crystal Calamity, is one of the hardest in the game (although admittedly the time limit only plays a small part in that difficulty).

Dual Strike and Days of Ruin also feature missions that are must be completed within a set number of turns/days. Both this and the more typical timed mission are the subject of one of Dual Strike's Survival campaigns. Time Survival is much harder than Turn Survival.

Too Dumb to Live: The civilians from Days of Ruin. Although understandable that they don't want to get involved in conflict, they keep forgetting that the Battalion is just about the only thing standing between them and oblivion. In particular, the "Mayor" turns the civilians against the Battalion primarily due to his fear that they will usurp his authority. Near the end, he makes a deal with Caulder/Stolos for the cure to the Creeper and to be left alone. Caulder/Stolos reneges on his deal and kills the Mayor with the supposed "cure".

Totally Radical: Due to another Woolseyism (see below), Jake from Dual Strike speaks in a somewhat grating 90's slang dialect, using "words" such as "sup?" and "dude" when they're not especially appropriate. His Japanese counterpart, John, is extremely serious and uses his headphones for military communications.

Waylon in Days of Ruin pulls a pretty similar "Why are these Lazurians all up in my business?" Somewhat ironically, he's otherwise a total Jive Turkey whose slang is stuck in the 50s. Granted, Waylon was clearly intended to be an annoying jerk, unlike Jake, who is somehow supposed to be a likable protagonist.

Trap Is the Only Option: Kanbei believes Sonja's warnings in one mission of Black Hole Rising that Black Hole's holding several strategically insignificant Yellow Comet cities hostage is a trap. He goes anyway, because as far as he's concerned, ignoring the trap and letting the cities be occupied by Black Hole would be unacceptable. He is a CO, and C Os protect their people no matter what.

Turned Against Their Masters: Caulder was on both ends of this: he reveals himself to have been a clone who killed his own creator, the real Caulder; and Cyrus turns on him for being immoral.

Technique scoring in the Advance Wars and Battalion Wars games (Days of Ruin attempts to be a shining example of this but ends up merely a revamped one)

Leveling up units in Super Famicom Wars, Game Boy Wars 3, and Days of Ruin.

Materials in Game Boy Wars 3 makes lesser unit losses more punishing.

Arrangement in Game Boy Wars 3's Campaign mode.

COs that can heal units with their powers encourage the player to safeguard wounded units, instead of using them for suicide attacks or cannon fodder.

Villain Ball: Caulder mocks Greyfield relentlessly for his policy to execute those who are infected with the creeper rather than quarantine them, not for the cruelty, but for the fact that it causes those who are infected to not come forward and thus allows the virus to spread unimpeded through his army.

Villain Decay: Hawke, the same person that marched his troops by an erupting volcano for a strategic advantage, who basically crushed an entire country, and abandoned his army as they fell at the liberation of Green Earth. At the end of Black Hole Rising, just when the allies are about to win, Hawke kills Sturm personally and basically regards the whole of the game as a 'test of his skills'. Cut to the start of Dual Strike, and suddenly not only is Hawke NOT in charge of Black Hole, he's barely even an important member whom is disposed of when he stumbles upon the truth.

Villain Exit Stage Left: Justified; the commanders presumably use radio to communicate and can therefore run away long before they're actually in any danger. Usually averted sooner or later, as the villains run out of territories to run to when defeated.

Played totally straight at the end of Dual Strike, where Jugger, Koal, and Kindle realize they're beat and set off in a tank to start anew elsewhere.

Mech Spamming. The rush works directly against any ground unit short of a Medium Tank, and high-level strategies tend to involve putting indirects behind the rush to handle those units. The entire strategy tends to fall apart once air units get involved. Especially effective with Sami and Sensei, as their Mechs are very strong (and Sensei can get a huge swarm of 9HP Mechs for free with his Super CO Power).

On a more general level this is one of the more common strategies when using Colin, Sasha, and/or Hachi, since they can afford to field more units than anyone else.

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